Inflation of Finnish postal service prices

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Finnish Postal Service (“posti”) justifies the sharp rises in letter postage prices with the sharp decline in letter volume. On the other hand, the volume of parcels has been compensating for the decline in the letter business. Notwithstanding their lucrative parcel business, Posti has also kept increasing prices for parcels. Unfortunately, equally neat statistics for parcel prices are impossible to assemble because Posti has constantly been changing the pricing structure. If you ask me, they also did this to obscure the price increase. With the last increase (19.04.2022), they, e.g., lowered the maximally allowed weight for parcels. Other previous changes include the maximum parcel dimensions and buying from the post office (versus the web), which has become significantly more expensive.The above graph shows the prices for the so-called “ikimerkki”. The ikimerkki is a stamp that pays for a regular letter up to a weight of 20g. This stamp has no fixed value but pays for the service also after future price increases. The pricing structure has also been changed a few times for letters, but much less so than for parcels. The last significant change was in 2017 when the postal service abolished the difference between priority and economy transport for domestic letters (the above statistics were assembled using the pre-2017 prices for priority letters).

Putin wants you to drive fast and much!

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I drive rarely, and these days, I rent when I need a car. This summer we decided to spend a two-week vacation in a cottage at a lake in the middle of the Finnish forest. You need a car if you want to get around in the Finnish countryside. Public transport might be working well in the Finnish capital Helsinki, but it is for all practical purposes absent from the Finnish countryside. Filling up the tank of our rental car cost me more than 150€.Given that I could fill up the same tank for less than 75€ still a year ago, I expected that people adjusted their driving habits to save energy, the planet, and their wallets. But I was mostly wrong.Driving slower and driving lessEverybody, who has not been living under a stone, knows that the most efficient driving speed is somewhere between 50 and 90 km/h. The air resistance increases with the speed. This increase is not linear, but exponential. By speeding, you save a minimal amount of time by wasting an incredible amount of energy. Even though most drivers complain about the horrific gas prices, hardly anybody seems to adjust their behavior either by driving slower or by driving less. I would like to know what the reason is for this paradoxical behavior, it’s inexplicable to me. I know that some drivers like to drive fast (I belonged to this category when I was 18). But hey: then you should shut up and just pay for the “fun”!Infantile requests for state subsidiesSuddenly, people who usually defend our market economy are calling for state intervention to lower gas prices. WTF? Just because for the first time you realize that you yourself are subjected to the powers of demand and supply you forget your free market values and call for state intervention. The only way to solve the problem of rising gas prices is to trust the market. Unfortunately, in many countries, the governments are exactly acting against all experts’ advice and are artificially trying to lower gas prices, e.g. by lowering taxation (e.g. France, Austria, Netherlands). That keeps the demand artificially high, further widening the gap between supply and demand, which was causing the high prices in the first place.

Prices on Michael’s Domain

Inflation of Finnish postal service prices

Putin wants you to drive fast and much!